Build: Tender to handover, with RA bills and retention.
Runs a project for contractors and system integrators from tender to handover: BoQ, measurement book, RA bills with retention, variations, snags and a signed handover packet that creates the AMC. Also carries product-engineering and incubator tools.
What does Kinnow Build do? It runs a contract from tender to the end of the defect-liability period. The bill of quantities is priced once and frozen as the budget. Site work is measured, certified and billed as running-account bills with retention held and released in stages. Changes are costed before they are approved, quality and safety stop-and-inspect points are recorded, and handover needs a signed packet. The same application carries professional-services timesheets and billing, and programmes for incubators.
Your Monday morning, before and after
A typical civil or interiors contractor with three to ten live sites, a project manager per site, and a billing engineer in the head office.
| Today | On Kinnow Build |
|---|---|
| The BoQ is a spreadsheet. Rates are typed from memory and nobody can say where a rate came from. | Import the lines. The pricer fills a rate only where it can point to your last purchase price, your catalogue or a target margin, and otherwise leaves the line blank. If someone changes a rate, Kinnow asks why and records who did it. |
| Bank guarantees and EMDs are tracked on a wall chart. One lapses and the customer encashes it. | Every guarantee is on one register with its value and expiry, and a warning goes out at 30 days and again at 7. |
| The site engineer's measurement sheet reaches the billing desk a week late, with the quantities retyped. | Measured quantity times rate gives the certified amount. Certify the measurement book, and the RA bill is raised from it with the gross filled in. The book is marked billed. |
| A client's change instruction is accepted on the phone. Three months later nobody knows if it made or lost money. | Each change is a variation with value, cost and time impact. Before approval, the margin check tells you if it is below the margin you won the job at, if variations have passed 20 per cent of the contract, or if there is no cost estimate at all. |
| Retention is a column in the bill that nobody reconciles. Release is argued from memory. | A retention ledger, per project and per subcontractor, shows held, released and outstanding. An over-release is refused. |
| Handover happens when the customer gets tired of waiting. The O&M manuals are in somebody's email. | Handover is refused without a signed packet. The composer drafts the packet from the document register and lists what is still missing. |
A contract, from tender to retention release
| # | Who | What happens | Where someone decides |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tender manager | Registers the tender with its EMD or bank guarantee. Each one needs an expiry date; one without a date is refused. | Win or lose is the manager's call. A lost tender stays on the register, since the guarantee is still your money. |
| 2 | Estimator | Imports the BoQ and prices it. Unpriced lines are listed rather than guessed. | Changing a rate needs a reason. |
| 3 | Project head | Winning the tender opens the project with customer and value carried across. An approved sales order also opens one. The project cannot be activated until one person is named accountable. | The accountable owner is named by the project head. |
| 4 | Project manager | Baselines the BoQ, which freezes it and turns its sections into budgeted work packages. Plans the schedule with durations and dependencies, then saves it as the baseline, once. | Only project managers can save the schedule baseline, and it cannot be repeated. |
| 5 | Purchase, accounts | Approved purchase orders appear as committed cost on the right project. The supplier bill moves that money to actual instead of adding on top. Approved timesheets book labour cost. | Purchase and bill approvals happen in Buy and Account. |
| 6 | Site engineer | Files the daily progress report with manpower, plant hours, work done, stoppages and safety observations. Records measured quantities in the measurement book. | None for the report. It moves progress on the work packages. |
| 7 | Quality engineer | Runs the inspection plan. A failed hold point must raise a non-conformance report with disposition, root cause and corrective action. | An inspection passes only with a signed measured record where a template is attached. |
| 8 | Billing engineer, project manager | Certifies the measurement book and raises the RA bill from it. Retention is withheld, approved variations are folded in once, and net payable is worked out. The RA-Bill Reviewer checks quantities against the book and contract before it posts. | Certifying is done by a person. A certified bill posts its journal in Account. |
| 9 | Project manager, customer | Walks the site, raises snags, drafts and issues the handover packet. Issuing takes a snapshot of open snags, so the customer signs against the list they were shown. | The customer's signed sign-back. Handover is refused without it unless you say otherwise, and that is recorded. |
| 10 | Finance head | Defect-liability period runs. At its end, retention is released in part or full. Closing the project needs signed handover, no open snags, no retention held, material reconciled and no open non-conformance. | Early retention release needs an explicit instruction. The closure checklist names what is missing. |
What the plan and the cost tell you
The cost cockpit shows budget, committed, actual and forecast for each work package. Anything that cannot be matched to one goes to an Unallocated line instead of vanishing into a total. Earned value shows how you are doing on cost and on schedule, and says so when either cannot be worked out yet, rather than printing a zero that reads like disaster.
Plan and health gives one verdict per project: on track, needs attention, at risk, or cannot say yet. Anything it could not read shows as unknown, and the project is not shown as on track. Material cost is entered by hand in the cost cockpit today.
Documents, lists and reports
| Output | What it contains | Who uses it |
|---|---|---|
| BoQ pricing worksheet | Lines with rate source, overrides and who made them. | Estimator |
| Measurement book and RA bill | Certified quantities, gross, retention and net payable, numbered in sequence. | Billing engineer |
| RA-bill statement | A printable statement of certified work, retention held and amount payable. It is not a tax invoice; that is issued separately. | Customer, billing |
| Retention ledger | Held, released and outstanding, per project and subcontractor. | Finance head |
| Guarantees register | EMDs, performance, advance and retention guarantees with value and expiry. | Finance, tender desk |
| Cost cockpit and earned value | Budget, committed, actual, forecast, CPI and SPI. | Project head, owner |
| Inspection plan, NCRs and scorecard | Hold and witness points, non-conformances, and a summary for each subcontractor. | Quality engineer |
| Permit, incident and toolbox-talk records | Permits with precautions, incidents from near miss to fatality, attendance. | Safety officer |
| Snag list and handover packet | Snags with severity and closing note; assets, serials, warranties and as-built documents. | Project manager, customer |
Services firms and incubators, on the same application
Professional services. Weekly timesheets with billable and non-billable hours; approving one books its labour cost to the engagement. Rate cards are set by role, with a charge-out rate and a cost rate, and they are dated, not edited, so a rate agreed in April cannot change March. Utilisation is billable hours over available hours, not over hours worked, and a person with no working week set reads as not measured, never as zero. You can invoice all approved time in one invoice, or bill a completed milestone once at its value. The engagement margin shows what you earned, delivery cost and support cost since go-live, and stays blank if any of the three cannot be read.
Incubators and accelerators. Programmes, cohorts, a portfolio of ventures, each with a green, amber or red risk rating, traction milestones and snapshots of revenue, headcount, funds raised and runway.
Agents that work here
RA-Bill Reviewer
Checks each running account (RA) bill as it is raised: whether the total certified so far goes past the contract as varied, and whether retention was withheld. It only advises; it does not post, change or stop a bill.
BuildProject Risk Predictor
Warns you when a project is running late, spending ahead of the work done, or billing ahead of it, measured against the baselined bill of quantities (BoQ).
BuildSafety Compliance
Built to total the serious site-safety findings not yet fixed, with their estimated penalty. The estimate and the fixed marker are set up with you.
Others here: a BoQ pricer, a variation margin check, a handover packet drafter, a defect-liability expiry watch, an engagement-margin watch and a punch-closure watch. We check each agent with you before it works on your records, and everything it produces waits for your team. Nothing is certified, billed or signed without a person.
Ask Kinnow about your projects
Ask in plain English. Before it answers, Kinnow shows the records it will read and what that will cost. Where records are missing, it says so instead of guessing.
Which projects are over budget?
Budget, committed, actual and forecast per project, with the unallocated amount named.
How much retention is held, and when does it fall due?
The retention ledger by project and subcontractor.
Which bank guarantees expire in the next 60 days?
Instrument, tender or project, value and expiry date.
Which variations are below our winning margin?
Variation, margin against the margin you won the job at, and the advice saved when it was approved.
Which snags are still open on site?
Severity, due date and age. Owner and photo evidence are not captured yet.
Who is on the bench next week?
Idle hours per person, from the roster and commitments.
The controls an owner cares about
- A baselined BoQ is frozen. Later cost questions are measured against it.
- Two RA bills cannot claim the same change order. Approving a variation is never blocked, but the advice on screen is saved on the record so you can see what was known at the time.
- A permit will not issue while a mandatory precaution is unmet unless someone overrides it, and the override records who.
- An unknown is never counted as a pass: an unanswered checklist item, an empty measured value or a register that could not be read stops the step and says why.
- An RA bill is reversed, not deleted: it keeps its number, is marked cancelled with a reason, and Account is told to reverse its journal. Once retention has been released it can no longer be cancelled.
- Veil, our privacy layer, holds back bank, tax and ID numbers and swaps names for placeholders before an AI call. It covers Ask Kinnow and most agents today; the rest are being added.
Connects to
- Sell: an approved sales order opens the project.
- Buy: approved purchase orders become committed cost and supplier bills become actual.
- Account: a certified RA bill posts revenue at the gross value with retention as its own receivable, and a subcontractor bill posts the mirror.
- Maintain: handover registers the assets and starts the defect-liability period.
- Contracts and leases: handover raises the AMC or O&M contract.
- Serve: support cost on an engagement comes from its service work orders.
Questions
Does Kinnow handle RA billing and retention?
Yes. Certified measurement-book quantities produce RA bills, retention is withheld on every bill and released after the defect-liability period, and the RA-Bill Reviewer checks quantities before a bill posts. A certified bill posts its journal in Account, with retention as a separate receivable.
What happens at project handover?
Handover is refused until the customer has signed the packet back, unless you state explicitly that possession has changed hands and that is recorded. Handing over starts the defect-liability period, registers the assets in Maintain and raises the AMC or O&M contract.
Is there an app for site teams?
No. The daily progress report works in the phone browser and needs a connection. There is no offline site app.
Can we bring our BoQs and open projects across?
Yes. BoQ lines are imported, and tasks from your current task tool arrive as issues with their original dates. Data is brought across in the first week of setup, and most clients see first results in about two weeks.
Who approves a variation?
Tag a change L1, L2 or L3 and decide who signs off at each level, in order. An L3 change also needs the customer's recorded acceptance before it can be approved. The margin check advises but never blocks, and its advice is saved on the variation. Approved variations fold into the next RA bill once.
What happens when an agent is wrong?
It cannot act on its own. The RA-Bill Reviewer flags a quantity that does not match, and your team decides. We check each agent with you before it works on your records.
Tender to cash. Each comes from your industry's processes, with an owner on every step and a clock on every hand-off. See the processes →
Inside this page
Projects & contracting
Tender to handover: bill of quantities, progress bills and retention.
- RA-Bill Reviewer: Checks each running account (RA) bill as it is raised: whether the total certified so far goes past the contract as varied, and whether retention was withheld.
- Project Risk Predictor: Warns you when a project is running late, spending ahead of the work done, or billing ahead of it, measured against the baselined bill of quantities (BoQ).
Professional services
Timesheets, rate cards, utilisation and engagement margin.
Incubation programmes
Cohorts, ventures and funder reports.
Start with one need. Switch on the next in a day. Same records, same login, no new licence.
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